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Tropes: The Bechdel Test

Ana's Note: This article originally ran as a Slacktiverse Special. This is a repost in case you missed it the first time.

The Bechdel Test, Bechdel-Wallace Test, or the Mo Movie Measure, is a sort of litmus test for female presence in movies and TV. The test is named for Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, who made it known to the world with this strip.

In order to pass, the film or show must meet the following criteria:

1. it includes at least two women* (some make the addendum that the women must be named characters)...2. who have at least one conversation...3. about something other than a man or men.

Most people who talk about Schrodinger's Cat do so with the understanding that the "experiment" is a thought experiment only. The concept of the Schrodinger's Cat is used to illustrate in the mind an aspect of quantum physics, namely how (if I understand correctly) an event at a purely quantum level could have a practical effect on the physical world. There's no real value, however, in going out and getting a cat and a box to put it in -- the "experiment" in question is in the mind, and not in the box.
I may not understand the Schrodinger's Cat experiment perfectly (I'm not, alas, a quantum physicist), but I do understand the Bechdel test. This is another test whose value is largely in the mind and in understanding the larger implications, and yet it's frequently misunderstood when brought up in conversation and particularly in reference to specific works. The test itself is fairly simple: does the work in question have two female characters who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man? Yes or no?

There's wrangling over the details, of course. Do the two female characters need to have names or a minimum of screen presence? Does the conversation need to be a back-and-forth or will a single line from one female character directed to another female character do the trick? Can the topic be a man, if the man is being discussed in a professional (i.e., not relational) capacity? If a single unnamed female cop asks a single unnamed female desk clerk, "Have you seen this man?" in the course of a criminal investigation and otherwise there are no female characters for the rest of the movie, is that "good enough" to pass the test?

There are fights over these questions. Serious ones. Speaking as a member of both the Firefly and the Star Trek: Voyager fandoms, there can be seriously hurt feelings and angry recriminations when the Bechdel test is brought up. Short version for the uninitiated: Voyager had a long history of sexually exploiting its female characters and focusing everything through Male Gaze lenses, but over the long running series, there were still many conversations between the female characters on the nature of humanity, the burden of responsibility, and the importance of finely ground organically grown coffee. Firefly, on the other hand, is generally seen as a more feminist-friendly work, but the series ran for a very short time and the Bechdel examples are fewer and farther between. It is impossible to bring this up online without hurting feelings. And, in fact, the whole thing usually degenerates into a few people explaining that the Bechdel test is not a measure-o'-feminism and a lot of people responding then what is it good for?! and then everyone walks away frustrated and unsatisfied.

It's true: the Bechdel test isn't a measure of feminism in a work. It's not a measure of whether or not a work is good. It's only very rarely even used as a reason to see or avoid a movie, and when it is, it's a question of personal taste and choice on the part of the viewer. So what is the test good for? Most people, myself included, use the Bechdel test as a thought experiment only. The question isn't "is this particular movie worth watching". The question isn't even really "does this particular movie pass the test", although that consideration is part of the bigger question. No, the real question the Bechdel test makes us consider is "why is it so hard to come up with a list of examples that pass the Bechdel test?"

Go back to the Firefly example above. Name me a scene where two women have a conversation that isn't about a man. Well, you'll probably reach for the Kaylee/Inara pampering scene where Inara brushes out Kaylee's hair in her shuttle. Name me a second one. Well, you'll dig down and pull out Kaylee asking Inara how many of her male clients wanted to take her away from her life as a Companion. We'll let you have that one, even though it's sort of about men, because I'm nothing if not reasonable. Name me a third one. Well... didn't Inara have a female client in one episode? We'll count that, even though it's somewhat overlaid with male gaze which is even lampshaded by Jayne's announced intentions... and even though most of what Inara and her client talk about are, in fact, men. Name me a fourth one. Um. Okay, surely the gals must have had some light banter around the dinner table at some point, and wasn't there that one scene where River states to Kaylee that she is badass? Not really a conversation, but we'll count it. Name me a fifth one. A sixth. A seventh. How many can you give me? Not ten, I'll bet.

Now name me thirty scenes in Firefly that feature two men having a conversation that isn't about a woman. I'll bet you can do that in ten minutes with plenty of scenes to spare. The men discuss reavers, the Alliance, the ship, the state of the finances, and the likelihood of the ambush they're flying into frequently and often. They have side discussions about wealth and privilege and religion and politics and guns. They discuss the moral implications of their thieving lifestyle, and they wrangle over how their lives will be affected if they give away money they can't afford and make enemies they don't need in order to help people they don't know. They discuss their loyalties to one another, and where those boundaries lie. They even talk about silly hats and hilarious bar ballads.

None of this means that Firefly is a bad show; I love Firefly. None of it means it's an anti-feminist show: the women are three-dimensional characters in their own right, and they're nuanced and complicated and thoroughly interesting to me. (YMMV, of course.) No, the value of the Bechdel test here isn't to trash Firefly or make it out to be a bad show because it's failed to give the female characters a voice.

Instead, the value of the Bechdel test here is to get the viewer thinking about the ways our society views women and the ways it views men. If your women on screen only interact with one another in stereotypical "feminine" ways -- in this case, largely talking about and growing interpersonal relationships -- then as a writer, you've failed to recognize and reflect the reality that women frequently and daily have conversations with each other about regular stuff. We talk about our jobs. We share our aches and pains. We discuss movies and TV shows and food and books. We exist as regular people, just as regular as the men around us.

The Bechdel test is a question of presence. Reading through the listings on the Bechdel Movie List, one is struck by how many films fail at the first point by only having one (or zero!) named female characters. Those tests that do pass, frequently hinge on split-second 'conversations' -- "Can I use the bathroom?", in one instance, and "Angel, no," in another -- that have to be diligently dug from the memories of the viewers reporting back from from the theaters. The take-away here isn't that there are a lot of bad movies out there; the take-away is that it's really dang hard to find the examples necessary to satisfy this simple test.

Presence of women in movies is important. In a world where women make up roughly half the population, it's been shown time and again that we're underrepresented in movies. There are three male characters to every one female character in movies. In group scenes with large crowds, the representation drops to one out of five. If women aren't visible and aren't vocal in movies, this aggregate under-representation underscores an ongoing belief in our unimportance. The Bechdel test illustrates that perfectly, not by picking out "bad movies" in particular, but by illustrating the incredibly unbalanced ratio of men to women in movies in general.

Take the same Bechdel test, and make it a question of race instead of gender. You'll have the same problems, with many of the same movies. It's not much easier to find scenes of non-white people having conversations about things other than white people; and -- just as with the original recipe Bechdel test -- the most obvious aversions occur in movies where the entire cast is made up of the group in question. It would seem that women have the best chance at having a voice when all the men have been excised from the movie, and that non-white characters have the best chance at having a voice when all the non-white characters have been removed from the cast. What can we make of this?

The "Reverse Bechdel test" -- in which the viewer is invited to find examples of two men having a conversation about something other than a woman -- is interesting because of its rarity. The test is usually only 'failed' if either all (or all-but-one) characters are female. These movies exist, it's true, but they're generally marketed almost exclusively to women; rarely is the summer blockbuster movie cast with zero male characters and expected to do well at the box office with men and women alike as excited viewers. It would seem that having a 1:5 ratio of men to women in a movie is generally expected to have similar ratios in the audience, but having a 5:1 ratio in favor of men isn't likely to hurt sales too much.

And this, in the end, is perhaps the real value of the Bechdel test: the solidification of the lowest possible expectations. The Bechdel test doesn't demand an equal ratio of female characters to male. It doesn't look for equal amounts of screen time or character importance or impact on the plot. It starts with the very basic question: of all the many, many characters in this movie -- ten, or fifteen, or twenty, or more -- are at least two of those characters female? And in this first step, an astonishing number of movies fail. And if we adjust for race and ignore gender, we still see a surprising number of movies that fail. What can we make of this?

Well, one possibility is that the roles are being written as white male characters who need white male actors. Fair enough. If you're writing a screenplay for an Apollo 13 remake, I guess you can't stock the space shuttle with a Chinese woman, a black man, and a Native American transgendered person. That wouldn't be historically accurate. But, here's the thing, almost none of the movies I watched this year dealt with historical figures who had to be X gender and Y race or else be Historically Inaccurate. And 90% of the movies I watched this year could have been cast entirely from random selection of race and gender for 90% of the roles. And yet... for some reason... they weren't.

I can't tell you why that is, because there are a lot of possible reasons at play here. Maybe writers tend to be predominantly white males who therefore predominantly write white male characters. Maybe casting directors tend to be predominantly white males who therefore predominantly cast white male actors in parts -- or perhaps they predominantly over-value the white male dollar at the box office and cast according to the assumption that white male audiences want white male actors. Maybe directors tend to cut parts written for non-white non-male characters as being less valuable to the overall piece than the parts written for the white male characters. Maybe a lot of things.

What I can say is that this sort of thing is sharply outlined by thought experiments like the Bechdel test. What I can say is that it takes something like the Bechdel test to get people to stop talking individual movies -- which largely boil down to preference, interpretation, and fan wars -- and to start talking cultural trends. What I can say is that this conversation is precisely why we need a Bechdel test, why we need lots of Bechdel tests, for gender and race and sexual orientation and a variety of other measures. The Bechdel test sharply outlines what our society presents as normative, as the "default" form a character does and should take.

That is what the Bechdel test is for. Not for the one-off artistic efforts, but for the aggregate effect as a whole on minority voices in our culture.

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comments:

Oooh, nicely said. I've always liked the Bechdel test, and it's one of the things I try to keep in mind while writing - not, as you said, because it's a measure of worth in itself, but because it forces me to keep in mind whether I'm drifting into the-characters-like-me-are-the-only-ones-who-count territory.

Interesting piece. One note, that I'm curious to hear your opinion on. I mostly learned about the test from TVtropes, where they mention that for the test it doesn't matter if the women are talking about girly stuff for it to count, or conversely if they're talking about men in a non-romantic setting (kids, parents, or your example of 'have you seen this man'). That a non-feministic talk between the girls should 'count' while a chaste, casual, or feminist discussion on the topic of a man or men should not was justified as that in case of the latter the female characters are there in service of the male characters: The two women are not disussing their relation, no matter how chaste or politically correct, to a male character. In the former case, even if the discussion is about a gender-role-based topic (shopping, shoes, cooking) it does acknowledge that the two female characters have their own interests, dreams or lives beyond whatever happens to affect the male characters.

Obviously, there isn't one law-mandated way to perform this test. It is a question of what you wish to 'test' for. The reasoning in that TVtropes article made sense to me. I'm curious how Ana feels about it. Do you feel, for the purpose you outlined, that this literal definition of the test is a good one?

1. Can women talk about "girly" stuff for it to count? Yes (but pro-tip to authors: use carefully). There's a lot to unpack there, but the point of the test (imho) is essentially: are there two "real" women in the work? "Real" women do talk about girly stuff, and girly stuff is not automatically bad. Heck, "real" women talk about anti-feminist stuff. So if the only women in your work are Anti-Feminist 1 and Anti-Feminist 2 and they talk about how much they like being anti-feminists, it does pass the test if they are characterized in a realistic manner. The caveat here is that the author is bumping into the problem that the only representatives for the female gender are anti-feminists, but that's not a Bechdel issue.

2. Can the women talk about men in any capacity and have it count? Yes (but ultimately this shouldn't be a saving grace). The example here is always "well, what if there are two realistically characterized police women, but they're talking about a male suspect for the entirety of the movie?" In my opinion, this would count, but also in my opinion, this is nearly impossible. I cannot imagine an entire movie with two strong female leads who ONLY talk about a male suspect. Look at Brad Pitt and Morgan Freemen in the movie "Seven" -- sure, they talk about the male suspect, but they also talk about the Divine Comedy, the case at large, the nature of humanity, how Brad Pitt met his wife, the apartment they live in, etc. etc.

The reason why "not talking about a man" was included (imho) is because women have been used as secondary characterization for the male leads. In other words, let's shuffle Bob off the screen so that Alice and Jenna can TALK ABOUT BOB. Bob is still the focus for the viewer, and Alice and Jenna could be talking robots dispensing 10 FACTS ABOUT BOB for all the viewer cares. So that caveat was put in to get around all that nonsense of "but the women talk! it's just that their conversations revolve entirely around men with zero exceptions!"

Thanks Ana. That last paragraph was what I think why the 'even if it isn't about a potential romance partner' caveat was included. You phrased better what I wanted to say. It's just that for me (and possibly for others) the first reason I thought of when I saw the 'not about men' qualification was that it plays to a stereotype. Namely the 'little girls giggeling and obsessing about boys' one. But on second thought I did agree with TVtropes, and your reasoning. If the only conversation(s) between female characters are about male characters, then the story is really about the male characters only and the women are just there to give viewpoints about the men. Well, the female characters could talk about their own characters with the men I guess, but such dialogues are generally also there to explore the (romantic, platonic or familial) relationship between the man and woman.

Side note, I'm still completely obsessing about the Daria series. One minor but nice bit about it is that it proves that your show can pretty much pass the Bechdel test within 5 minutes of the start of every episode, and then making a few dozen victory laps before the credits (and as a side note, having considerably more difficulty with the Reverse Bechdel test) without it needing to be appeal or be marketed to women only.

I was interested when I learned exactly to what extent Hollywood had actually literally trained its writers to fail the Bedschel Test on purpose (not in so many words, but they got the same effect). "Audiences (meaning, of course, young hetero men, who are obviously the vast majority of our audiences herp derp) just tend to tune out when they see them womenfolk on the screen talking about stuff, except when it's about relationships or the hero or whatever." It appears Hollywood's got themselves a long tradition of cloaking institutional bigotry and ignorance behind 'what the market will bear' and what 'audiences want' and stuff.

I discovered "Dykes to Watch Out For" back in high school, and have loved it ever since. (My father is now also a fan.)

I'd never thought to apply it to my own writing before. What I've realized, after some thought, is that my mysteries, both historical and contemporary, tend to feature women talking to women a great deal. My SF and fantasy projects tend to have more isolated female characters talking to men.

I'm now considering if a few of my supporting cast should be women who currently aren't. I'm not sure they'll cooperate.

Huh. I recall hearing something similar happening with the The Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon, where, for the second season, the producers/showrunners/network (I can't recall which) specifically made it so that each episode would only feature one female Legionnaire (the show had a rotating cast, with only about five different Legionnaires showing up per episode, from a total membership of about 20). Given that the original Legion of Super-Heroes was one of the earliest (mainstream) comic books series to begin featuring women outside the "token female" role, it's the sort of thing that leaves me speechless at the ginormous amount of fail.

I really, really like the Bechdel test, but only as one facet of judging a movie/show, and I think it is definitely one that requires you to think in terms of percentage of screen time, as well. I watch a lot of crime shows, and a lot of them pass the test. But they aren't necessarily feminist shows, and some of the strongest female characters I like are surrounded by majority-male casts.

(Example: Criminal Minds has had a reasonable number of woman-to-woman talks over it's six or seven seasons, some of them dealing with characters' personal lives, most of them case-of-the-week related. And it's got some ass-kicking female characters. But it's also got a terrible habit of showing Pretty Young Women being victimised, whereas their male victims tend to get a lot less of the loving camera work and artfully torn clothing problem. Castle, while a much younger show, and with a low percentage of Bechdel-Test passing conversations, feels less exploitative, and the female characters are also often made of win. Of the two shows, I'd pick Castle as more progressive and feminist, but it's a fuzzy, little-thought-out judgement. And now I want to write a blog comparing favourite shows over the course of a season...)

I think that genre plays a big role in whether or not shows will pass, as well.

I know you don't want to get into particulars with Firefly, but I do want to say something and I think it goes to the way things have changed since 1986 when the strip first ran. Namely things are much more team and ensemble based now then they were then.

Now name me thirty scenes in Firefly that feature two men having a conversation that isn't about a woman. I'll bet you can do that in ten minutes with plenty of scenes to spare.

I can't. Not really. Not scenes like the ones you cite between Kaylee and Inara, a one-on-one conversation with no one of the opposite gender in the room. The show you're describing and the show I watched seem very different. Those conversations you say took place between men I remember as taking place within a mixed gender group. I don't know; I feel like you're just not seeing the women in the show.

Which makes me wonder if women simply become invisible within a mixed gender team even to people who seem to be looking for them.

The Bechdel test does not require there to be no men in the room or in the background, and neither do I. The fact that there are no men in the few woman-to-woman conversations I could cite in Firefly is not a side-effect of the Bechdel test, but rather a side-effect of writers' tendencies to insert men dominantly into conversations when there are men in the scene.

Having said that, even if we *did* make a Reverse Bechdel test where the conversation had to be man-to-man AND have no women in the room, there are enough Mal/Jayne, Mal/Book, Mal/Simon, Mal/Wash, and Mal/Bad-Guy-Of-The-Week conversations that I still think we could hit 30 easily. Heck, the pilot alone has Mal/Jayne, Jayne/Bad-Guy, Mal/Simon, Mal/Book, Mal/Wash, and Mal/Badger, iirc. That's 6 in one show.

I don't know; I feel like you're just not seeing the women in the show.

LOL! Sure. That's probably it. Why not? Zoe and Inara and River are only, like, my favorite sci-fi TV characters, so it stands to reason that I'm totes sexist and only notice them when there are men in the room.

Speaking of technical questions, can it be counted as a 'conversation' if one person never speaks? If not, it puts 'Portal' in the odd category of failing the test despite having ONLY female characters.

But does the fight itself count as a "conversation?" For instance, if you've got a female cop and a female bank robber, and they shoot it out without any words exchanged other than obligatory "Freeze, Police!"

If that scene is the only scene in the entire movie / TV show / book where two women speak to each other about something other than a man, then no, the work does not pass the Bechdel test. A "freeze, police!" statement is not a conversation.

GLaDOS may be a computer, but she's still a woman; she's referred to with female pronouns and uses a female voice, and doesn't object to any of this, so I think it's reasonable to assume she identifies as female. (Also, parts of her personality come from a living woman named Caroline, though it's not clear exactly how much).

Chell is the daughter of an Aperture employee (you can see her name on the project with the giant potato), but it's a fair point that she's not really a 'character'. Pretty much the only thing we know about her personality is that she's incredibly tenacious, and that comes from supplementary material.

I've been watching Claymore (thanks for turning me on to that, by the way, it's great--I haven't read the deconstructions yet, though, since I'm waiting until I've caught up) and it struck me that from what I've seen of it (first nine episodes) it may be one of those rare things that almost doesn't pass the reverse Bechdel test. Outside of some brief parts with the townsfolk and Raki and his brother in the first episode, I can't think of any conversations between two male characters.

Episode 1 has the townspeople discussing the yoma and what to do about it, and they talk about the Claymore as an Organization, which we could probably count. Episode 2, iirc, has Clare's handler tell Raki the true nature of Claymore and how they're doomed to turn into monsters, but that could be considered a convo 'about' a woman. Episodes 3 & 4 (the Rabona Holy City arc) have some discussions between Raki and the priest and soldiers, but again those conversations are largely about Clare.

Raki is put on a bus for the Teresa arc, but we do get some bandit-to-bandit conversations about the Claymore rules. Again, that's iffy in terms of passing. The "Four Survivors" arc barely has two males, period -- there's the male yoma and the male handler and they don't interact. And then Raki is put on a bus against during the Ophelia arc and the only men we have are those in The Organization talking about what to do with Clare. Doesn't pass.

Raki will come back in the Northern Campaign arc and hang out with a couple, one of whom is a man, and learn some sword-fighting techniques from him. So the series I think can squeak by on the Reverse Bechdel test, but it's REAL close.

This is just to say..I hardly ever go to movies. But some how this weekend, I ended up seeing two Steven Spielberg movies in two days. And not only did neither of them pass the Bechdel test, they didn't even come anywhere near even qualifying to take it. Women? What're those?

Sheesh.

(Also, I have now decided that every movie shown in a megaplex, no matter what its actual title, should be subtitled "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." No wonder I'm going hard-of-hearing.)

We went to Underworld: The Fourth tonight, and if 12-year-old girl children count, then it passes. Otherwise, I'm not quite sure... there's a scene where Kate Beckinsale watches while a woman heals the 12-year-old girl, and I *think* the woman and Kate exchange a line... maybe. The only other woman in the movie exists in a sea of men.

1) The thing that I rarely hear discussed when the Bechdel Test comes up is that the test originated with a lesbian who was sick of movies premised upon her non-existence. Not that it's not important to point out how a preponderance of Bechdel-failure points to an undervaluing of women in Hollywood, not in the least; but it's also important to remember it disappears non-het women.

2) It really distressed me to see, upthread, someone using the phrase "herp derp" to characterize some thought process as stupid, and with no one saying anything about it. It's the sound-effect version of saying "that's retarded." In exactly so many words. You know that ugly gesture consisting of hitting oneself in the chest with the edge of a floppy hand to "imitate" a person with a developmental disability? If you've ever seen someone do that in a face-to-face conversation, you've probably heard them accompany the gesture with a "herp derp" type noise.

So if "retarded" isn't ok, "herp derp" shouldn't be either. At least, that's what I think. Ana, what do you think?

Nicole, first off, thank you for bringing this up. I strongly encourage people to speak up when they see -ist terms in conversation because I have privilege like whoa and often fail to see things.

On this issue, I'm not sure what to think. I've seen it used on Shakesville, where I myself have been moderated for the ableist term "idiot" (so they're pretty on the ball on those things) so I thought it wasn't an ableist term. In response to your comment, I looked it up, and everything I can find says that it was coined by Matt Stone and Trey Parker for use in the South Park series. Its first use was here:

http://www.myspace.com/video/mambo/mr-derp/7186744

... where I do not *think* there is supposed to be anything developmentally unusual about the user of the term? So I'm afraid I'm not sure I immediately understand how the term is ableist. I'd greatly appreciate hearing more from you on the matter, though, because I want everyone to feel safe here in this space.

1) The thing that I rarely hear discussed when the Bechdel Test comes up is that the test originated with a lesbian who was sick of movies premised upon her non-existence.

I'd say you're right that it's rarely discussed, I've never seen it discussed. How did you learn that that was the motivation? Is there author's commentary on it somewhere?

For as long as I've known about the test I've known that it was created by a lesbian, but I've never heard it about being a response to the invisibling of lesbians before. What follows is what I've always thought.

The original presentation of the test makes no mention of sexuality and the original example of a movie that passed was Alien. The reason that Alien passed was because the women talked about a monster, if instead of having the monster hatch from Kane they'd had Kane be turned evil and acidic but remain otherwise human, the movie would have failed the test as originally stated, and whether it would have failed the spirit of the test would be a matter of debate (the question of whether "something other than a man" excludes discussion of men in non-romantic contexts.) Yet the movie's treatment of the existence or non-existence of lesbians wouldn't have changed at all.

So even though I knew it was by a lesbian, I never saw reason to think it was because she was a lesbian sick of movies' treatment of lesbians so much as because she was a woman who was sick of the fact that:1 Women were under represented2 When represented they're often treated as having their lives revolve around men.

Which is why I, personally, think talking about "something besides a man" should be interpreted as extending way beyond romantic reasons. If they're talking about the nature of Jesus/Zeus/Buddha I'll yield that that's usually religion and thus something besides a man, but if they're talking about their male boss or a male serial killer, that's still going to be about a man in my eyes.

That can potentially make it more tricky to apply because then you have to determine whether the conversation is about this male person, or bosses/work or serial killers/crime/investigation in general, but really the same thing applies to whether something is about a male romantic partner, or about love/romance/dating/relationships/whatnot in general.

Anyway, based on the original statement of the test I'd always assumed that it was because she didn't like how movies were treating women as a whole, and I'd be interested to know how you learned it was actually specifically in response to movies treating lesbians as non-existent.

My attempt to look it up led me here:http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/derp

Which says that the South Park people used it before South Part and it dates back to 1998. I am not in a position where I can watch a video at the moment, so I have not seen the original use of the word.

Thank you for the link. Since you can't view it, in the Baseketball video, Matt Parker and Trey Stone are raiding a woman's underwear drawer for the usual movie-standard lingerie and toys. An attractive woman comes in and says "what are you doing in my Mom's room?" The men drop the items and flee; one of them yells "derp" once he's out of the room.

It sadmuses me that in the DTWOF link there, one of the commenters talks about how confident they are that Serenity will pass the test, since it's got four major female characters with lots to talk about not involving men.

I think part of the point of the test, from a lesbian-non-erasure perspective, is that if a movie doesn't have at least two women who talk to each other about something that isn't a man, it's going to be extremely difficult for it to feature anything like a romance between two women. One of the scariest things (from a bigot's perspective) about lesbians is the implicit assertion that a woman is not utterly bereft and adrift if her life does not revolve around a man.

Even a movie that nominally features a lesbian character but fails to pass the Bechdel Test can readily be said to be erasing lesbians by reducing them to an abstract label and possibly a male fetish.

I'm right with Ana about loving the Bechdel Test as 1) an extremely fast and loose measure of the feminism of a given film and 2) a searing indictment of the entertainment industry as a whole. I think the latter is the more important and real use of the test, but I admit my real fun comes from the former. Especially if tweaking the rules yields very different results. I don't even worry about it if the show fails to pass the Reverse Bechdel, but then, so many do...

With Firefly: It's been a while since I've seen "Trash", so for all I know, Inara and Saffron actually center their entire conversation around Mal, but IIRC Inara has that awesome, awesome conversation with Saffron at the end which would give at least that episode a clear pass. And if nothing else, "Where's Wash?" in Serenity with Zoe's reply gives the BDM a technical pass. The BDM paints itself into a corner by choosing Mal almost exclusively as the viewpoint character; I wonder what it would look like if it was done "Objects in Space"-style from River's viewpoint.

When Ana originally posted this I think I figured that using the standard Ana lays out* Firefly averages one passing conversation per episode. Of course given that you'll have an episode like War Stories where there are three that means that other episodes have none at all.

Only some of that can be explained via the focus on Mal as a character. Out of Gas, for example, is focused so tightly on Mal that the only mono-gender conversation in it that doesn't have Mal as a participant is about Mal. Since Mal is male it fails the Bechdel test, if Mal were female it would pass the test but fail the inverse.

On the other hand something like Serenity (the episode) really has no such excuse. Most of the failing parts of Firefly are going to fall firmly into the no excuse category. It's been a while since I've watched** so I could just be forgetting things, but I think OoG might be the only failing episode where the failure can be explained via a focus on Mal.

Or, for a much shorter version, focusing on Mal who is male does contribute to the Bechdel fail, but not nearly enough for the fail to be blamed on it. A female Mal would not flip things around (with the exception of OoG) because there's a lot more to it than just Mal.

That said, it would probably make things a lot more equitable.

-

* I personally would go with a stricter standard in which case Firefly would fare worse.

** I loaned my copy out a year ago, have yet to get it back, only confirmed last week that I had actually loaned it out, it had been long enough that I forgot where it was and thought I might have just misplaced it.

I don't watch Criminal Minds (too scary!), but having started watching Castle since reading this post (when it was on Slacktiverse), I was actually amazed by how often it passed. Almost every episode. And when it failed, it was usually on the 3rd count - where the interaction was with two named women speaking about Richard. Course, this is assuming that you count two female cops talking about a male corpse as "not talking about a man", which I do - his gender is of incidental importance to either of them. They only care about his corpseishness. I also recall one episode where Richard freaks out when his daughter goes behind his back to speak to Kate alone, and assumes it's boys (or drugs, etc.) - with the surpise twist being that she's discussing a trip to France that she's considering. I actually think that the producers of Castle must be deliberately trying, to get it right so often.

On the other hand, I was sad when I realized that the most recent Harry Potter movie only passes if you count Ginny's mum telling off Beatrix before she hits her.

On the other hand something like Serenity (the episode) really has no such excuse. Most of the failing parts of Firefly are going to fall firmly into the no excuse category. It's been a while since I've watched** so I could just be forgetting things, but I think OoG might be the only failing episode where the failure can be explained via a focus on Mal.

chris: I forgot to mention my full agreement that Firefly fails the spirit of the test, which makes me sad; however, I was really only focusing on the movie's fail when I mentioned the focus on Mal. I can't, off the top of my head, think of a scene in which Mal was not a major component. Wait, no, I can, but then we're to the male Operative. In the movie, though, I still feel like genderswapping the two most central characters would fix the Bechdel Fail handily. It's far less an ensemble piece than the show. The show with one woman whose life is bound to her male captain and her husband, one woman whose career is largely centered around men, and one near-voiceless woman whose chief connection is with her brother. And Kaylee being only barely balanced, her career and personality only just outweighing her lovesickness.

... I think I'll go back to playing rig-the-test games. Considerably more cheery. I will console myself that Zoe would be an identical character if her captain were female (although her marriage would be different), River would be more powerful if the series had continued, and perhaps one of the fallen men would be replaced with another strong female. It's at least a fairly fixable show.

... I think I'll go back to playing rig-the-test games. Considerably more cheery.

And I think that's the saddest thing there, because I sort of feel the same way. I love Firefly, and it's one of the more feminist-friendly sci-fi franchises I've seen, simply because it has "lots" of women (not half, of course) and they'r e(a) not sex objects and (b) allowed to talk and be competent.

But they're still not allowed to talk to each other.

They're Smurfettes in their own little corners of the ship -- Inara / Cabin, Kaylee / Engine, Zoe / Bridge, River / Sick Bay, roughly -- and that makes me so very very sad.

Speaking of other Bechdel tests, I've seen it noted that one of the few People of Color conversations is Zoe telling Book that his naturally kinky hair is scary. Not problematic at all!!! *sigh*

I will console myself that Zoe would be an identical character if her captain were female (although her marriage would be different)

I'm often intrigued by genderswaps of major heroes (I still wish that one day someone might produce a genderswapped version of the 2005 Doctor Who series, with the Ninth) but feMal Reynolds alone didn't really catch me - until you said this. Because Captain Mallory and Zoe smuggling and burgling and heroing their way across the Verse is a thing of magnificence.

Speaking of other Bechdel tests, I've seen it noted that one of the few People of Color conversations is Zoe telling Book that his naturally kinky hair is scary. Not problematic at all!!!

I imagine they specifically had Zoe (with her own glorious kinky hair) be the one to deliver that line specifically to undercut the Unfortunate Implication. Obviously there's an arrow, but the scariness (to a mentally-traumatised girl) has more to do with how his hair is apparently 'lurking' when in his normal style. I'm trying to think of how else they could have done that scene - something in engineering shorts and blasts Kaylee's hair into a huge stormy mass?

I was thinking that Zoe and Book don't have a particularly wide range of things to talk about (Zoe not being apparently socially spiritual or into sharing with strangers) but then I recalled the nature of Book's Secret Past and now I'm sad again because they could have had so many great conversations later in the series.

Well, I'm white, not a POC, but I do have kinky hair and I would not describe Zoe's hair style as "kinky". "Curly", absolutely, but for most people with kinky hair to achieve her hair style, myself inclined, we would need absolutely pounds and pounds of creams and oils.

Whereas Book's hair in that scene really is natural-just-out-of-the-shower.

There's actually been some fascinating blogging and theories about curly/kinky hair and how the latter can seriously impact career opportunities in US America...

Which means that the two POCs in Firefly only talked to each other because they wanted the black woman to say something that they didn't think a white character should. *facepalm*

Yes, this is basically my conclusion as well. Good point about the kinky/curly hair distinction, too. I guess I don't really register a big difference, but I'm quite willing to chalk that up to my own ignorance.

It's easy to be so! I've had frizzy hair all my life, and I still don't know as much as I need to. I wrote three black women into my novel and got stock pictures for them and had an artist run some sketches and only realized AFTER all that was done (because a friend pointed it out) that NONE of the three women have "natural" hair -- all of them are either heavily creamed or wearing wigs or weaves. *embarrassed*

I do actually wear glasses, but I wear small glasses with half rims. (I don't actually care about the half rims, I got them for the shape.) I don't think I look that different with them off. I think I did have an experience like what you're describe when my mother switched from very large glasses to ones more my size (though squarish, which I would consider an abomination in picking out glasses for myself.)

I figured it would be simple to show pictures of me in my glasses.

As it turns out, I don't take picutures of myself that often. I looked and I found pictures of sunsets, pictures of a Cara-Cara lamp (like a tangerine lamp but using a different member of the orange family) pictures of my cat showing off her magical ability to stop being cute the moment a camera is pointed at her, pictures of renovations and road construction, pictures of crows, pictures of a hawk that was near the crows, pictures of an angel statue in a cemetery, pictures of a damaged statue of Jesus in the same cemetary in which someone righted the fallen statue and then placed the head (which had broken off in the fall) in such a postion as to be looking back at the body, pictures of snow covered trees, pictures of the amount of snow in front of my house, pictures of my shadow as seen on the back of a tanker train car when I'm standing on an overpass significantly above said car, the sun eclipsed by a street sign, the sun eclipsed by a cloud, a tree being removed, the dawn's light reflected off of power lines, and -you know- stuff. And that's all from the past month. Not a lot of me.

There were actually some pictures of me to be found. Mostly when I was trying to use myself to illustrate something. (Which is kind of odd in itself because I pretty much never show pictures to others and rarely look back at them myself.) From the 12th I have pictures to show how snowy it was getting via the accumulation on me. (I was outside shoveling, you see.) From the 21st I have pictures in which I attempted to use myself to demonstrate the scale of a giant piece of ice I moved.

In the ones from the 12th I have magnetic sunglasses attached to my glasses, which does a good job of showing the size and shape of my glasses, but kind of gets rid of any sense of their subtlety. In the ones from the 21st I've just got my glasses on without the sunglasses. One of each should be attached to this message.

Looks like something out of Lord of the Rings. 'Course, I'm from Texas, so I would think that, I suppose.

Actually, at one point in high school I had the nickname Frodo because someone saw me trekking through the snow in a way that reminded them of Lord of the Rings, so people up here have that reaction at times too.

In fact it reminded them of something impossible because they said it looked like I was going over [whatever that snowy mountain was] in an elven cloak and LotRs fans were able to point out, "Wait, they didn't get those cloaks until the forest of [thingy] which was after they got to the other side by going under the mountain via Moria because the trek over didn't work out." But I was Frodo, and someone else was Pippin, and I don't remember if anyone else had such names. Pippin actually looked like a hobbit. A giant hobbit for he was of fairly standard height, but apart from scale everything about his appearance, and a fair amount of his personality, seemed to scream hobbit.

You never struck me as the bearded type. Mind you, nobody I know primarily through non-face-involving means ever looks like I think they will, including me.

(I get the impression most people feel a sense of rightness, a visceral "That's me!", when they look in a mirror? 'Cause I don't. It's a decent enough face as they go*, and it doesn't feel wrong exactly, but it's just not me.)

*Except for all the pimples. Honestly, face, you've been going at this for six years straight. Can't you give it a rest?

I don't get a sense of visceral recognition. But I'm weird with faces - if I look at anyone's too long, they start distorting strangely, especially if I'm upset, and I have trouble with recognizing people. So there may be something weird going on there brain-wise.

In fact it reminded them of something impossible because they said it looked like I was going over [whatever that snowy mountain was] in an elven cloak and LotRs fans were able to point out, "Wait, they didn't get those cloaks until the forest of [thingy] which was after they got to the other side by going under the mountain via Moria because the trek over didn't work out."

I'd forgotten that, and it's clever that the movie bypassed that entirely because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that the party wasn't kitted out with 'standard' elven hiding cloaks while in Rivendell, rather than getting them in Lothlorien. Makes Elrond look a bit tight-fisted, that. Huh.

I've actually been meaning to shave it off for over a year now. I'm just slow when it comes to getting around to things. Also it's easier to put off, "And then I will look completely different" day than it is to do it.

I'm not big on change, so when I want to make a change, and this goes for pretty much any change, I get sort of conflicted. I'll want to do it, just not now. Trouble is, it never stops being now.

(I get the impression most people feel a sense of rightness, a visceral "That's me!", when they look in a mirror? 'Cause I don't. It's a decent enough face as they go*, and it doesn't feel wrong exactly, but it's just not me.)

I don't have a real sense of recognition when I look in the mirror. I know it's me, and I can certainly recognize my own face, but I don't feel it's me. I don't feel much of anything. I have no idea how that compares to other people's reactions to seeing their own face.

No big identity reaction from me when I look in the mirror either. I remember being around 16 when I noticed that there was actually a considerable discrepancy between my mental image of myself and reality, and since then I think my mental image has trended closer to what evidence indicates, but I don't think I would feel like my whole identity had been thrown off if it changed.

I do obsess a bit when I catch my reflection - not out of narcissism, but because I would really like to not look ridiculous, which is what tends to happen to my appearance if I don't keep a close eye on it. A few incautious comb strokes while my hair is damp and for the next twelve hours I look like John Connor in Terminator 2.

it's clever that the movie bypassed that entirely because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that the party wasn't kitted out with 'standard' elven hiding cloaks while in Rivendell, rather than getting them in Lothlorien.

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to - even in the movie, they don't get the cloaks until Lothlorien, and they still have the same failed mountain-climbing escapade before that. It is definitely odd that Elrond and the council didn't gear them up before sending them out, though. A few more of those nigh-invisibility cloaks and super scones could have been useful. Or anything that would help scale the huge mountain that is the very first obstacle they expect to run into.

Hmm. I think I understand now why there's that moment in The Stand where some people are setting out on a very long journey and they specifically say to each other "We must not bring any supplies with us or it won't work". Yet another LotR reference.

I have no visceral recognition of myself in a mirror, either, and I say this as someone who has spent long hours staring at every detail of my face. (Not out of any particular vanity*, but because when you're trying to learn to paint portraits, no model comes cheaper...)

*although when I was in high school, I did this thing where I screwed up my features to make them as distorted as possible, then looked in the mirror, to say, "That's me." Then I would relax them, and the contrast would make me say, "Hey, I'm *pretty*!" (Yes, I was weird. No weirder than any other adolescent, I don't think.)

Ah, but Internet people would skew towards people who aren't good with faces.

I've heard people talk about "But in Real Life™, you can see people's faces!", like that's an upside. Clearly, I must find these people and ask them. Possibly some passers-by on the street, though walking up to a random stranger and asking "Do you feel visceral recognition when you look in a mirror?" (or anything else, really) requires rather more nerve than I have.

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to - even in the movie, they don't get the cloaks until Lothlorien, and they still have the same failed mountain-climbing escapade before that.

No? I remember them having cloaks in the mountain-climbing scene. I guess those were just regular cloaks then. Darn Elrond.

they specifically say to each other "We must not bring any supplies with us or it won't work".

I... are they serious? (This was one of my biggest frustrations with Journey to the Center of the Earth. If you take zero water because you expect to find a spring, you deserve your death. Well, I mean not REALLY, but in a book, yeah.)

I find my own reflection fascinating, but I've no idea if that's narcissism in my case. I have very fluid facial expressions and people have told me I'm easy to read (although sometimes they get me WAY wrong, so... I have poorly matched facial expressions??) so if I pass a mirror, I'm always immediately distracted trying to work out what someone else would think I was thinking.

I did this thing where I screwed up my features to make them as distorted as possible, then looked in the mirror, to say, "That's me." Then I would relax them, and the contrast would make me say, "Hey, I'm *pretty*!"

I... are they serious? (This was one of my biggest frustrations with Journey to the Center of the Earth. If you take zero water because you expect to find a spring, you deserve your death. Well, I mean not REALLY, but in a book, yeah.)

Spoilers for The Stand:

In the penultimate section of the book, Our Heroes realise that they've been approaching the apocalypse all wrong, using logic and worrying about food and infrastructure and disease, while the real threat (no he isn't) is the Antichrist and his Black Magic, which they can only fight with White Magic. (Yay, the hundredth brick in the Wall of Racefail.) And they determine that the only way to invoke this White Magic is to set out now to confront the Adversary, a journey of some hundreds of miles, and take no supplies but rely on Providence to keep them alive. In the end, vg ybbxf yvxr gurl jvyy snvy, ohg gurl ner hygvzngryl fhpprffshy orpnhfr bs Tbyyhz naq gur unaq bs Tbq. (Gung'f abg n wbxr; gurve fhpprff vf yvgrenyyl qhr bayl gb gur vagreiragvba bs n ernyyl boivbhf Tbyyhz rkcl naq na npghny unaq znqr bs yvtugavat.)

So yeah. Basically everything in the last chunk of the book is screamingly blatant authorial fiat.

To remain on-topic, I'm not certain, but I think the entire 1000+ page book might fail the Bechdel test. There are a number of female characters, and they might even share conversations from time to time, but they are wholly focused on men. (There's even a godawful sequence in which a pregnant woman reflects on how the independence of women is an artifice of the modern world because in the wild you need a man to protect you.)

(There's even a godawful sequence in which a pregnant woman reflects on how the independence of women is an artifice of the modern world because in the wild you need a man to protect you.)

Wouldn't this be a reflection on how "independence" is an artifice because in the wild you need someone to watch your back? I mean, why is it only the independence of women and the needing of a man? But then I'm trying to apply logic to sexism and thus do I automatically fail. Wow.

[Cis] men are Bigger and Don't Get Pregnant and are therefore powerful self-sufficient individuals, unlike fragile and unreliable women. Basically.

The story as a whole ended up feeling less to me like a great epic and more like a psychological study of the author. Here are the parts where we see how he thinks of race, here how he thinks of gender, here how he thinks of success, social exclusion, faith, etc. I heard once and have never again been able to find a great quote about how autobiographies are redundant because it is in our fictions that we can best display ourselves. (Maybe King doesn't actually believe some of the explicit statements of the characters, but when they are supported by the objective reality of the narrative it becomes sketchy. If you think the Pregnancy Epiphany is bad, you don't want to know what happens with the black soldiers.)

Fascinating. I know that when I write, I definitely have my characters think and do Fail-y things I don't approve of, but there's also intended to be a narrative overlay of NOT A GOOD IDEA. If the Objective Reality starts to support the Fail, then that does seem terribly problematic.

I would actually be very interested in what happens to the black soldiers, since I'm unlikely to invest the time to read the book in the near future. :P

Gods, yes. One of the many things I liked about THG was that the girls in the arena did just as well as the boys, survival-skills-wise and nobody really thought that was unusual.

Because that's how black people would cope with the end of the world, apparently?

Is it wrong that this was SO Race Fail that I almost thought it was funny in a ludicrous WOW, THIS EXISTS IN THE REAL WORLD? kind of way. Like, this exists in the real world? Really? A white author actually thought it would be a good idea to have all his black characters be reverse racists who murder all the white mens when civilization collapses? Sure. That seems like a good idea to write this thing down. Why not?

Gods, yes. One of the many things I liked about THG was that the girls in the arena did just as well as the boys, survival-skills-wise and nobody really thought that was unusual.

Hunger Games is amazing on gender roles (lack thereof) in so many ways. How great was Cinna? The man substantially altered the political future of the entire continent through fashion.

To be fair, The Stand *also* has a folksy religious/magical black guide who dies happy because she lived long enough to pass on a prophecy to the white folks.

Abagail was a much better character in the first half of the story, when she got her own POV sections and religious consternation. Based on the way King talks about his writing style, I get the impression that he had no idea what to do with her once she had served her role of summoning all the white men to safety, thus leading to her disappearance and death.

Because that's how black people would cope with the end of the world, apparently?

WTF Idon'teven.

I gave this book to hapaxson for his last birthday. I must ask him what he thought of this. (Unlike hapaxdaughter, he is not in the habit of calling me at work with indignant tirades of DOYOUKNOWWHATTHISGUYJUSTSAID??)

(There's even a godawful sequence in which a pregnant woman reflects on how the independence of women is an artifice of the modern world because in the wild you need a man to protect you.)

I'd *so* like to introduce that fictional character to Katniss. Or maybe moreso to Peeta. So they could have a conversation about how the ability to survive is not, in fact, gender-linked.

Then I'd like to have a conversation with the author about who he really thinks would be better able to help a pregnant woman survive in the wild - himself (because he's a man, after all) or an athletic 20-year-old (of either gender) with some survival skills...

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